Harmonix needs Playtesters!

[BubbaC]

how about central sq? i know you guys are around here somewhere. i'll do ANYTHING you need. i love you.

considering they are only a few blocks up from the mid east.. i'm surprised i didnt know they were there till i applied for a testing job a while back.. it's tucked away nicely. so many times have i walked right by it and never noticed... ofcourse i never walked by during anything the might remotely represent normal business hours..

[sa_nick]

Hmm, return flights to Boston from South Australia are only like $4500. I can play test by day and hang out in the forest with Sasquatch King by night. Free accommodation rocks, plus free pizza. How can i NOT do this?

[WiseOldUnicorn]

Georgia is close to Boston, right? >_>

[Miami_13]

I live in Maine and I just Google Map'd it and it's just over a 2 hour drive.

[fourdegrees]

Dammit I was hoping you needed playtesters for the european release

[HMXChrisCanfield]

Great response! Thanks everyone!

A few more details here:

1. This is strictly volunteer, single-session stuff. We basically need people who can come into our office, look at something, and tell us which parts of it we're screwing up. We lose a lot of perspective staring at something day in and day out, and it is absolutely essential that we get people in here who can tell us that our 30 button hypercolor interface is just baffling, or that the first song in the game is too hard. That reality check is impossible on our own.

What gets playtested isn't always the fun part, and the game is not always fun at the point it gets playtested. If it was, we'd ship it. But it will give you insight into the development process, and some very direct input into the direction of the game. And pizza.

2. Sessions usually last between thirty minutes to an hour and a half, with a few hearty souls going for five hours or more (Thank you!). I'll let you know ahead of time which it is. Usually this involves playing something in a structured fashion (play variant 1 for 15 minutes, comment on it, play variant 2 for 15 minutes, compare), although sometimes it is as simple as playing around with new menu options and letting us know what makes sense and what doesn't.

3. This is mostly for stuff in the future. I wanted to get a jump on finding people in the area before we get really slammed with playtesting work. An e-mail may come anywhere from two weeks to two years from now.

4. We don't generally do remote playtests, as they wouldn't give us the moment-to-moment clues that we need. You should just move to Boston.

5. We generally keep to the hour rule-of-thumb simply because we don't want people to get all excited and take day trips out here. On a fundamental level it skews people's perspectives of the game, and unadulterated perspective is what we need. And it can be kind of a letdown when you get one of the boring-but-necessary parts of the game, or those times when the whole thing is just broken.

6. Sadly, we can't get to everyone who signs up. Sorry if you've signed up in the past and didn't get in.

7. The pizza place we usually go with is Beauty's Pizza over on Broadway behind MIT. Yeah, they are pretty amazing.

[poochieb]

What about those of us who live an hour away but also work full time jobs? Can this happen outside of normal 9-5/10-6 business hours? Like nights/weekends?

[Apples]

Count me in.

Just UPS all your testing materials over to my house and I'll give them a thorough and vigorous workout. I do software design at work anyway, so I'd be great for it.

[HMXJohnlok]

What about those of us who live an hour away but also work full time jobs? Can this happen outside of normal 9-5/10-6 business hours? Like nights/weekends?

I'm not sure what the plans are going forward so take this with a grain of salt, but I've seen Chris here with people as late as late as 9PM, so I think they sometimes do late-night stuff for those with day-jobs.

[dfjdejulio]

1. Only sign up if you're within an hour's drive of Cambridge, MA. I loved the guys from Poland who signed up, but it just isn't in the cards.

If I promise a Harmonix developer free room and board in our guest suite, can we do the playtesting here instead? (I own a really big house.)

(Alternately... send a playtesting rig out with Harmonix bands when they go on tour! Freezepop will be in my town in a few weeks, I just saw the promotional poster this morning.)